"Here's something that really pisses me off: Yelp. I was
against Yelp for a long time. I don't like the idea of
Yelp. The problem for me is that crowd sourcing is
very beneficial except when it comes to things like restaurant
criticism and restaurant reviews and restaurant
recommenders. Just the same way I don't ask my five year old
to tell me whether or not I should go see the movie This
Is Forty or Sessions or The
French Lieutenant's Woman, I don't ask my son which John
Updike book is his favorite — because he'll just point at any old
random one.

And while he might get lucky, and certainly most John Updike
books are really good,Yelp essentially gives a tremendous forum
for a bunch of uninformed morons to take down
restaurants. That's a lot different than Pete Wells taking
down Guy Fieri's restaurant."

Is that it? Nope. Tell us how you really feel, Andrew:

"Now, while some people may see that as being a fairly mild thing
to talk about, some people may think there's Zimmern, another
tempest in a teapot. No. What this is, is it's just further proof
that after I softened my position on Yelp a year ago in an
editorial in Minneapolis St Paul Magazine where I said look, some
of that stuff seems to be fairly well managed.

I have now decided after another six eight months have gone by
that the number of stories that I hear like this from people who
I trust, who I know aren't BSing me (and Doug and Bryan are
friends of mine) that Yelp has become dangerously unstable.
Because clearly they have people abusing the system, who are
using the Yelp name to go out and graymail and blackmail
restaurants. Yelp to me is something that just doesn't work.

It's official now: Yelp is on my **** list."

Well, Yelp is quite a polarizing website. Some users won't even
patronize a place without checking the site first, while those
like Zimmern avoid it like the plague.

Yelp hasn't said anything about Zimmern's rant yet, but we'd love
to hear what they have to say.